LGA 1155

AsRock Z77 Extreme4, NZXT X41 In an S340 Case Install & Review

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• published: 31 Oct 2015
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Hey Guys, today we’ll rebuilding the old HP 1287c We’ll be replacing the original motherboard with a new AsRock Z77 Extreme4 We’ll also be installing a Kraken X41 CPU Water Cooler And we’ll be putting it all in an NZXT S340 case The i7 used to run really hot in the old case So, the water cooler isn’t as much for overclocking as it is to keep the CPU cool so it’ll do more work and last longer I picked the older Z77 motherboard because I wanted to reuse the strong i7 that was in the HP The Extreme 4 is bargain priced these days, and it has everything we’ll need. It can handle up to 32 GIG of DDR3 RAM, it has an 1155 socket, and its a perfect fit for the third Generation Malasian CPU The board has Two X 16 - P C I e slots two legacy PCI slots, and It also has four Sata three ports that will allow us to use a pair of SSDs and also a pair of SSHDs to improve IO. Let’s get it into the case First, we’ll snap in the rear IO panel,then we'll just drop the motherboard in place. During installation, hold it up at an angle, and press it gently against the rear of the case, and then just lower it onto the standoffs The S340 case has that helpful Center Pin standoff that makes it easy to align the motherboard correctly the first time. So here’s the Malaysian i7. It still has the thermal paste left over from a previous install of an Intel Motherboard that wouldn’t post. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that or not… but I had to send that board back. When you’re installing the CPU, make sure to align the triangle on the CPU with the triangle on the CPU retention clip. The socket is designed to make it easy to install the CPU; Just don’t twist it or move the CPU from side to side. When you’re locking down the retention clip, push it away from the hold down screw, push it down til it touches the motherboard, and the ears of the retention clip will naturally slide under the head of the screw. The CPU cooler also has the thermal paste from the failed Intel motherboard episode No worries, it cleans up easy with alcohol. OK… So, My take on thermal paste is this It’s best to spread it out evenly over the CPU so you get complete coverage. I know there’s a lot of other thoughts on this, but NZXT packages the cooling block with thermal paste already applied, and THEY spread out evenly. You have to figure they know what they’re doing, so I'll take a hint from them and follow suit. Installing the CPU cooler is easy. The cooling block and Pump just slip down over the screws in the backing plate. And then, you just tighten down the thumbscrews Next we’ll install the RAM. We’ll be using DDR3, and with this CPU it runs as dual channel, so it’s important to make sure the memory in each channel is paired. I’ll post a separate video that provides more detail about single, dual and quad channel so we can keep this one moving along The wiring for the CPU cooler is straightforward: 1) plug the pump into the CPU Fan header and 2) plug the fan on the radiator into the other wire coming from the pump.And 3) you plug the USB connector into an available USB 2.0 header. I’m just going to tie the cooling tubes off to the cable for the 24 pin power for now. If you take a look at the back of the case, you’ll see that the S340 has a different approach for cable management. It’s simple. It’s clean.And I like it. Most of the cabling fits neatly behind the blue wiring panel, where you can tie it together. The wiring for the front panel header just slides under here. The HD Audio from the front panel goes here And then you slide in the power for the CPU here. Let’s fire this up. Ahhh… unlike the Intel board, the AsRock does POST! The S340 has an intake filter, and there are openings on the top and bottom of the S340 front cover to ensure plenty of air gets into the case. Now, the TJunction Max for this CPU is 100 C, but I’m not comfortable running it above 80 C. This same i7 used to idle at 55 and hit well over 70 C even under a small load in the old HP. Notice the idle temperature with this setup. We’ll use the HeavyLoad App to bring the CPU usage up to 100% on all cores. That’ll stress it a bit so we can see how the cooler works. Notice that the temperature quickly moves up to mid 50s and stabilizes. It used to run hotter than that at idle in the old case. It doesn’t look like HeavyLoad can challenge the Nvidia GPU… Running tests on both shows that the CPU temperature is stable under load in the Mid 50s. I’ll break down the individual bits of this build as separate videos in the series. That Intel Board failure put me a little behind schedule, so needed to get this rig back to work. Watch how quickly the temperature recovers as soon as I remove the load… Excellent!